Government and public health officials have issued all sorts of guidelines to help people protect themselves against the spread of Covid-19. But there's another contagion that experts seem helpless to stop: The plague of prophets warning that the coronavirus is a sign we're at the "end of days."

There is something about pandemics that cause panicked people to empty their minds along with supermarket shelves. Countless doomsday warnings

That's the passage when Jesus says about the end of the world: "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

"Jesus himself said, 'You don't know the hour,' yet some self-appointed prophets today seem to know more than the angels around God's throne," prophets may be driven by another sin: pride.

There's a long history of bad doomsday predictions.Historians say many Christians in 17th-century Europe predicted the world would end in 1666 because the numbers "666" represented the mark of the Beast mentioned in the Bible's Book of Revelation. When the Great London Fire, which lasted four days, erupted that year, many saw it as a fulfillment of the prophecy.